


make me stay sharp and keen

by Kate_Reid



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Botany, F/M, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, accidental stalking, ferns, small town, soft as an easy chair, you'll probably need to brush your teeth after reading this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 06:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Reid/pseuds/Kate_Reid
Summary: Lots of green, a shy botanist, and a lonely gardener.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 25
Kudos: 61
Collections: Reylo Moodboard Inspiration





	make me stay sharp and keen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reyloise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyloise/gifts).



> This was written for the Reylo Moodboard Inspiration Event, and is based on this gorgeous moodboard by reyloise:
> 
>   
>    
> 

Ben isn’t spying; he’s just . . . _observing._

He’s heard so much about this woman, and now he’s _here_ because of her. Through sheer luck, he’s been able to rent the cottage directly behind hers. And so, he gets to watch her, from the back patio in his garden. Mercifully, there’s a large hemlock tree between them, concealing him from her view. Ben doesn’t want to be the creepy neighbor. Dammit, Jim, he’s a botanist, not a stalker, after all. 

The woman-- _Miss_ _Rey_ \--isn’t at all what he’d expected. From everything he’s heard, she’s _always_ been here. However, when he first sees someone walk out into the back garden of the cottage before his, he’s confused. Maybe this young woman is Miss Rey’s daughter. But she’s the only one he ever sees. 

*******

He decides to make discreet inquiries around the village, starting with the pub. When he walks in, he’s immediately recognized as someone _not from here_. Ben finds himself the object of stares averted just as he looks up, whispers halted just as he hears. Even though he’s keeping his head down and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, seated in a corner with a pint, everyone notices him. 

The expedition does garner a few answers, though. Yes, Miss Rey is a young woman, and yes, she does have “a way” with plants. But everyone he asks seems to be oddly protective of her. They eye Ben with suspicion, so he curtails his questions, even though he wants to know so much more.

*******

She chops wood in dungarees, the strokes of her axe sure and strong. There’s a neat little pile of logs by her back door, which she always covers with a tarp once she’s finished stacking. 

He sends away for binoculars, telling himself that it’s for his work. This is how he rationalizes his time just _looking_ at her.

She hangs sheets on a clothesline. They flutter in the breeze, intermittently obscuring his view of her. 

Still, he watches her. His binoculars let him see past her garden and into her house. And oh, mercy, he’d like to make an excuse, but he can’t. If he were caught, he’d have no defense at all. But he keeps on, noting the minutiae of her life.

Every night, she cooks a meal for herself. Depending on the weather, she eats inside at the tiny table in her kitchen or outside on her patio. She’s always looking over her shoulder, though, and eventually, he figures out that she’s looking at the phone that sits on a small table between her living room and kitchen. It’s a large, heavy model--a prewar special, glossy black Bakelite with a big dial. She never uses the thing. 

He sees her holding several animated phone conversations, mostly smiling and happy, but those are always conducted on her cell phone. Sometimes, she walks through her garden during her calls, always looking at and touching her plants as she talks.

She’s engaged with her garden even when she isn’t tending it. Watching her takes Ben back to a time before academia, back to a time where his interest was solely in watching things grow, taking pleasure in their progress, finding satisfaction in the simplicity of a new leaf.

Ben finds himself leaving his binoculars inside and taking a walk around his rented cottage, observing the plants in his own garden. He identifies each of them officially to himself, smiling as he remembers the Latin. There’s a large watering can in the shed out back, which he fills before making another lap, murmuring nonsense to the leaves, stems, and flowers. “Meeting” everything growing around him brings him peace, and he feels connected in a way that he hasn’t in a long time. Miss Rey has truly inspired him, and she doesn’t even know it.

That evening, he decides to treat himself to a meal and a pint at the pub. He hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been for a good meal. The frozen stuff he’d been surviving on hadn’t been at all as hearty or satisfying as the hot, savory plate before him here in the pub. He’s just considering ordering a second serving of chips when he happens to look up. 

There she is, perched on a stool, chatting happily with the bartender. There’s a short glass in front of her--it looks like whisky on the rocks. She picks it up and takes a hearty swig, then laughs at whatever the bartender’s just said. Her laugh wrinkles her nose and makes her impossibly more lovely.

Ben wishes he were a bolder man. But he isn’t. When the server comes back round to him, he quietly orders more chips and another pint. 

He arrives home before she does. He knows this, because he’s already seated on his back porch when her headlights pull slowly into her driveway. He curses himself again, even as he reaches for his binoculars.

She sits in her battered little red-orange car for several moments, just looking up at the sky. 

It’s a clear night; stars twinkle all across the vast blue velvet overhead. He wonders what she’s trying to find up there. And once again, she reminds him of something he missed.

In his younger days, he’d been allowed out after dark to observe night-blooming plants. Those evenings fostered an interest in stargazing that he’d abandoned after moving into the city, where the bright lights made it nearly impossible to see the stars properly. 

The sky here has no metropolitan glow to obscure his view. For once, Ben uses his binoculars to look _up_. He’d missed the stars, and he takes several moments to look for his favorite constellations. When he gets back inside, he’ll have to see if his funds will permit him to order a small telescope from Amazon. 

Turning his attention back to terrestrial events, he notices that she’s gone inside. Lights turn on, then off as she goes to bed.

Sighing, he gets up from his chair and goes inside his own house.

*******

Rey is a little bemused by her new neighbor in the cottage behind hers. He’s a large man, dark-haired and broad-shouldered. Sometimes, he sits for hours on his rear patio. Clearly, he thinks that the big hemlock shields him from view.

It doesn’t.

She’s a bit creeped out when the binoculars appear. But she’s already made inquiries around town. Apparently, he’d been asking about her in the pub one night. However, Poe’s recollections of his questions make her smile. _“How long has she lived here?” “Does she ever talk about plants?” “Did she mention ferns specifically?” “Is there one fern she talks about?”_

Her own observations of the man tell her even more. One afternoon, when she’d been out in her garden, just walking through it as she spoke to Finn on the phone, she saw that the man was suddenly absent from his seat on the porch. He was walking around in his own garden, sometimes stopping to crouch and smile at the plants. He was gone for a moment, but then reappeared with a watering can, sprinkling the soil, his lips moving a little as he reached out to touch a vine or knelt to pull a weed.

One night, when she stops by the pub for her semi-regular glass of whisky, he’s there, alone in the corner, hunched over a plate and a pint. Poe tells her not to look, but she does immediately, cutting her eyes quickly to the booth where he sits alone. He looks up, and she thinks he’s caught her staring, but no, he’s just speaking to Kaydel, pointing at his empty glass and plate.

Kaydel tells Rey later that he had been extremely soft-spoken and polite. He’d tipped generously and asked about ferns, of all things.

A few nights after that, she sees him out on his patio again. He’s got a box, which he opens, then carefully assembles and sets up a telescope. After pointing it at the sky and adjusting it, he grins to himself, then scribbles in a small notebook.

Maybe he’s also looking for his lucky star.

*******

The telescope has definitely been a smart choice. He’s been able to reacquaint himself with the stars, and he’s picked up his old habit of logging the constellations and their positions relative to his location. At the very least, it gives him a visible excuse to be out there.

Ben also takes to rambling over the land near the cottages. He observes the local plant life with interest, sometimes stopping to take notes or sketch particularly intriguing leaves or flowers.

These new activities take him out more often, and he finds himself spending less time on his porch. He hopes that the woman--Miss Rey--hadn’t caught him watching her. It’ll just make it even harder when he finally approaches her, something he’d been putting off. He’s ashamed of himself when he realizes why he’s been putting it off. She’s so lovely, and her kindness to her plants makes him feel soft inside. He wants to say so many things--tell her that he understands why she smiles when she tends her garden, confide that he also stares up at the stars. But he knows he’ll stumble over his words, embarrassing himself, and even worse, making her feel uncomfortable.

He only wants to ask about her ferns.

*******

She notices that he seems to be getting out more, exploring the meadows and forests surrounding their cottages. He’s acquired a hat, probably a good idea to shield that pale face of his. Its floppy brim gives his aquiline features a cute, boyish look. 

One day, he passes within shouting distance of her as she’s fishing in the stream, but she realizes he probably can’t see her. If she called out to him, she'd give him the fright of his life. The sun is quickly dipping, and the sky is grey. Rey gathers her things--she should head back herself before it gets dark. 

She trudges home and does all of the necessary dirty work to prepare the small fish she’d caught. It’s just finished on the grill, and she’s plating it next to some steamed greens from her garden. The scent of the fresh herbs she’s cooked with wafts pleasantly. She’s smiling down at what’s sure to be a tasty dinner when she’s startled practically out of her skin, nearly dropping her plate. 

_The big black phone is ringing._

Her dinner immediately forgotten, she sets the plate on the table and rushes to the phone, snatching up the receiver. “Hello?” she answers breathlessly.

There’s only a click, then the deep drone of the dial tone.

She drops the receiver back into the cradle with a thud. Her head spins, and she runs outside, through her garden and straight to the hemlock tree at the back. Under the gently drooping branches, she shelters herself, surrounded by green, her back against the tree’s trunk. As Rey settles, wrapping her arms around her knees, a cone drops from the tree right beside her. She picks it up, wrapping her fingers around it, then finally begins to cry.

*******

Ben is sitting on his back porch with a mug of tea when he sees the hemlock tree rustling, followed shortly by the unmistakable sound of sobs. When he stands, he can just make out Miss Rey’s figure canopied by the tree’s lower branches. It seems wrong of him to stay out here while she cries, so he takes his tea inside. 

*******

The next day, Rey doesn’t even want to get out of bed, but she must. Her plants won’t wait for her sadness to pass. When she finally makes her way out the back door, she nearly trips over a small box. Arranged in the box is a small plastic bag of leaves, a note, and a tiny fern in a little clay pot. 

_” Miss Rey,"_ the note reads, _”I’m your neighbor, Ben. I should have introduced myself long ago. I’m a botanist studying here for a while, and I’ve heard that you have quite a collection of ferns. I’d love to speak to you at a time convenient for you. Perhaps we could meet at the pub? Here is my phone number--feel free to call any time. ~Ben Solo”_

After the signature, there’s a postscript, _“P.S. ~ I find this bramble tea quite soothing in the evenings. It’s very good with honey.”_

Rey looks more closely at the bag of leaves. He must have picked these from the patch up the hill. There are steeping instructions written in the same elegant hand as the note.

*******

After tiptoeing onto her porch to drop off the little box, Ben absents himself for the day. He drives to the university a few towns over to do a bit of research in the library. As he’s leaving the library to find something to eat, his phone buzzes in his pocket. 

It’s his neighbor. He’s pleased to hear that she sounds cheerful. Before he knows it, he’s arranged a dinner meeting with Miss Rey at the pub in an hour. 

Thankfully, the tight scheduling gives him just enough time to drive back and get to the pub, while allowing him no time at all to sit around and worry.

When he gets inside, Miss Rey is already there, seated at the corner booth he favors. She gives him a wide smile, which he can’t help but return.

Ben finds himself drawn into conversation so gently and naturally that he can’t recall exactly when his back relaxed and his shoulders dropped from near his ears. She starts by asking questions of him--where was he from, how long would he be here. After she’s drawn him out, he feels comfortable enough to begin asking questions of his own--does she grow a lot of food in her garden, was there a local gardening club. 

Rey is glad to see Ben finally settling into his ease. When she pulls out a tablet to show him pictures of a few of her ferns, his visible delight is utterly adorable.

Their mutual love of plants is just a starting point. Rey finds herself confiding that she’s thought about ordering some honeybees and starting a hive. Ben loves the idea of local honey and shyly offers his help, despite knowing nothing about raising bees. The subject of honey leads them to herbal tea, and Rey mentions several plants that make pleasant, earthy brews. She offers to show him where they grow in the area.

*******

Over the months, the little fern outgrows its clay pot, and Ben and Rey find a place for it in her garden. 

The shipment of bees arrives, and Ben and Rey learn together.

The honey is delicious in their homemade herbal tea blends.

One night, they take turns searching the sky through the telescope. 

They find that they’d both been wishing on the same star all along.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something like a story that I've wanted to write for ages, and I was so tickled when Reyloise's lovely moodboard fit it so well. This story is heavily inspired by ["Evergreen," by the Fiery Furnaces.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S7EzKxvljQ)
> 
> Thank you to flawless_sorcerer_supreme, situation_normal, and WinglessOne for putting up with this all week. 💙
> 
> [Come say hi!](https://linktr.ee/stainlessstyled)


End file.
